The Hanover County Sheriff's Office will have to turn over information about its deputies following a successful appeal by a pro-transparency researcher who requested public records nearly two years ago.
A panel of three judges in the Virginia Court of Appeals (COVA) reviewed a yearslong case against the department, which withheld information about its staff when responding to a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request filed by Alice Minium in August 2023.
Minium — one of the founders of OpenOversight VA, which bills itself as “Virginia’s only statewide police transparency database” — requested “a roster of all sworn law enforcement employees on payroll with your agency as of today’s date.” The request sought information including name, title, rank, gender, race and salary.
The department responded with a document that withheld the names of all deputies below the rank of captain, court documents show. Catey Dickensheets, Hanover’s human resources director, cited a Virginia Freedom of Information Act exemption excluding undercover officers from disclosure requirements.
Unsatisfied with the county’s response, Minium petitioned a state court in Hanover in October 2023, seeking to compel HCSO to produce additional information. Dickensheets sent another partially redacted list that included some deputies below the rank of captain — but only those in “highly visible public-facing positions.”
Dickensheets and County Attorney Dennis Walter told Minium that the department’s reason for continuing to withhold the names of certain officers was a separate FOIA exemption protecting information that would reveal “the staffing, logistics, or tactical plans” of undercover operations.
However, the county’s response still didn’t satisfy Minium, who later sued the county and elected Sheriff David Hines in one of Hanover’s trial courts.
The trial court judge sided with the county in December 2023, ruling that someone could use the list of names to publish photos of all officers — damaging Hanover’s ability to staff future undercover operations. (Courts in Chesterfield County applied similar reasoning when they sided with that county’s police department over Minium in a similar case last fall.)
Virginia Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit that advocates for government transparency and open records access, has argued that the courts’ reasoning was flawed.
Megan Rhyne, VCOG’s executive director, told VPM News Virginia’s FOIA law has always maintained exceptions for certain information related to law enforcement officers, but they’re often overused and misunderstood.
“This notion that salary data has to be disclosed has been in the law for years and years and part of that means it should be available by name,” Rhyne said — adding that in her experience, law enforcement departments seem to believe the rules of VFOIA don't apply to them, but they do.
VCOG filed an amicus brief in support of Minium’s appeal to the state court, arguing that in 2017, the General Assembly amended VFOIA to explicitly clarify that lists of names of public employees (including law enforcement officers) may not be withheld.
In a ruling this February, the state appeals court panel determined Hanover didn’t provide enough evidence that Minium's request would put its undercover officers in danger to merit a VFOIA exemption.
“[The] County presented no evidence that any particular deputy had worked undercover, was currently working undercover, or was slated to work undercover on a specific operation,” Judge Junious P. Fulton III wrote in the opinion. “The only evidence presented was that all deputies might hypothetically serve as undercover officers in the future.”
“We shouldn't be playing hide the ball when it comes to knowing how much we're paying our public servants,” Rhyne said.
Representatives from the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council were also keeping a close eye on this case’s outcome. The state agency is another nonpartisan group of experts who answer questions and resolve disputes regarding Virginia;s FOIA rules.
The council’s executive director, Alan Gernhardt, told VPM News that although personnel records have been exempted multiple times, the legal precedents of the past say otherwise.
“Names have been open under Virginia FOIA, since at least 1978,” Gernhardt said. “Police officers, just like other public employees or any other law enforcement generally, the names are open. Now there are the exemptions, of course.”
Gernhardt noted the staffing for undercover operations, protective details and undercover officers are generally protected. That is what Hanover’s legal team argued at each level of the proceedings, but that argument ultimately didn’t sway the judges.
“If somebody wants a full roster of all the officers’ salary and rank that's open,” Gernhardt said. “If you want to know which ones are assigned to undercover operations, they can say no we're not going to tell you that. I think the court's opinion mostly just confirms that prior understanding.”
As for how this case will affect the future of FOIA, Gernhardt said the commonwealth has always had some broad exemptions compared to other states when it comes to law enforcement matters. The Curious Commonwealth series from VPM News explored the strength of Virginia’s FOIA compared to other states in late 2023.
Since VFOIA grants discretion to the custodian for the vast majority of records exemptions, some stewards give more information than others. In Gernhardt’s 20 years of working in public records law, he’s found that some law enforcement departments share information more readily — while others are more restrictive with the information they dole out.
“It’s not always FOIA versus law enforcement,” Gernhardt told VPM News. “Sometimes law enforcement wants things to be open too — and the more stuff they give out, the better relationships they'll have with the community, better understanding of what's going on, but those relationships vary from place to place.”
Hanover County officials may still appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court for a possibly different interpretation than COVA’s.
A Hanover County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson told VPM News the department could not comment on the case while it weighed options, including further appeal.
Disclosures: VPM News Director Elliott Robinson is on the board of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. A 2023 VPM News article about the Virginia Freedom of Information Act quotes plaintiff Alice Minium in her role as OpenOversightVA co-founder.
Neither Robinson nor the Curious Commonwealth team participated in the reporting, editing or production of this article. Questions about this article and VPM News’ overall editorial policy should be directed to Managing Editor Dawnthea M. Price Lisco.
